Millennial Parallelisms (#5)

See the series here

Throughout The Bible, God presents vivid pictures of various ‘Christ-types’, or saviors. Adam is generally regarded as the first. Other types of Christ include Noah, Moses, Abraham, Boaz and David, to name a few - men positioned and propelled to perform pivotal roles to keep God’s eternal plan of salvation on track, pending the arrival, death and resurrection of Jesus, our final Savior.

There are several very interesting millennial parallelisms between Adam and Jesus. Consider these initial parallelisms. Do you perceive others?

--Both will have been married to their ‘spouses’...by God: Adam to Eve, and Jesus to His Bride, the full body of saints from across the ages of history, redeemed and immortal.

--Both ‘sired’ the human race: Jesus through Adam, and Adam through Eve.

--Their millennial lives will have both figuratively and literally ‘sandwiched’ mankind’s existence on earth!

--Both will have ruled/reigned for a millennium: Adam ruled as patriarch of the then entire human race, and Jesus will rule as King over all the nations that will survive the tribulation punishments and the Armageddon War. (See: Revelation - Future Attacks in Israel)

Adam was the first patriarch and his life spanned nearly all (93%) of mankind’s first thousand years on Earth. His ‘reign’, that of a mortal man, ‘fell short’ of a millennium by exactly 70 years. (This may be significant in terms of Biblical numerology.) As patriarch over the rapidly growing human race, he no doubt shared with his family about his and Eve’s direct experiences with God (in the person of Jesus) in the Garden of Eden. After he sinned, he and Eve were excommunicated from the Garden - second only to the devils’ ‘excommunication’ from Heaven. Rather than sulk in defeat, he probably tried his level best to stem the slow, but definite tide of corruption coming upon the Earth from his succeeding generations! Let's tune in to one of his possible rebukes:

Great, great, great grandson, you shape up, ya here!

What you’re doing is SIN, and there’s a price to be paid!

Stop it!! Straighten up and walk right before God!

Adam was likely terribly regretful of his own sin that ended the glorious Garden experience. His first few generations may have believed and possibly even venerated him, not only as the first man, but also for his Godly/Garden insights. Over time, however, succeeding generations of grands, great and great-great grands would increasingly disbelieve him and, just as he had done, disobey God in their pursuits of evil. Moreover, it definitely did not help that ‘…the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.’ (Genesis 6:2). ¹

In parallel, Jesus will return to Earth with His immediate family -- His bride, all His immortal, glorified saints from the previous 4 ages of history, and through us, He will rule with an iron scepter over succeeding generations of sinful mortals. He will be venerated by us saints, and likely increasingly unappreciated by the mortals. After all, we mortal humans tend not to like the idea of a monarchy, especially living under one! The initial generation of people who will survive the great tribulation will undoubtedly harbor great resentments about the horrible punishments they experienced during the tribulation, and the horrible ‘nuclear-type’ death their family members and compatriots experienced when Jesus and His saints returned to Earth! (Zechariah 14:12 and Revelation 19) Then, successive generations of mortals who will have no concept of the tribulation period may appreciate Jesus’ reign even less and less, just as later generations in Adam’s family may have felt about all his talk of walking and communing with God (in the person of Jesus) in the Garden of Eden, and about and God’s requirements of mankind to resist evil.

Now, consider just how regretful God (in the person of Jesus) was at the end of man’s first millennium - even regretting that He had created man:

And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth,

and He was grieved in His heart. (Genesis 6:6)

Might Adam have had similar feelings about his increasingly evil family of mankind, possibly to the point of becoming increasingly frustrated, even angry? I think so. Ezekiel reveals Jesus, at the end of His Millennial Reign, will ‘take this up quite a few notches! In response to man’s great Gog/Magog rebellious attack on saints of that epoch in Israel, Jesus will have ‘blazing rage, fiery wrath, and heated fury’. (Revelation 20:7-9) The Bible cites this as mankind’s last stand, our final rebellion against God and everything He stands for! This reportedly will be the culmination of satan’s campaign of deception following his ‘little while/short time’ release from the bottomless pit mentioned in Revelation 20:3) 

Ponder these (unanswered) questions:

--How little is ‘little’; how short is ‘short’? Where might Jesus and His saints be when this attack plan is concocted? The last phrase of Revelation 9 gives a clue: 'And fire came down from God out of Heaven and devoured them.' Elsewhere, I surmise 'Heaven' is the new Earth The Lord promised Isaiah He was creating (present tense). (See: Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 and also, Your Heaven IQ (Series))

--Since The Bible reveals mortals will have lived for hundreds of years (Isaiah 65 mentions a child dying at 100), how old will the people in this exceedingly large army likely be?! (Revelation 20:8 seems to hint that the 2nd Gog and Magog army might be much larger than the army at the Armageddon War (Revelation 19) will have been!  Imagine, the nerve of very old people (old by today's standard) to join an army to attack Israel, where Jerusalem will have been the world's capital for a thousand years! I surmise they might be after major 'the booty' that will have accumulated there during Jesus' reign, just as the 1st War of Gog and Magog will have been --  all about 'the booty' 5 armies could capture. (See: Revelation - Future Attacks in Israel) 

--If the magnet for this attack will indeed be the incredibly 'UGE' proportions of the world's wealth that will have been accumulated in Israel during Christ's reign (voluntary donations to curry favor with Jesus and/or kingdom taxes?), I seriously suspect this will mask the pent-up resentments for having to deal with an iron scepter monarchy for so long: 'GOOD RIDDANCE! Now let's go get our booty back!' See how well Isaiah 60 - 63, Psalm 72, Ezekiel 38 - 39, and Revelation 19:13 set the stage for such wealth accumulation, the planned attack, and Jesus' very personal bloody response to this Gog/Magog experience. Fascinating!

--Finally, it is interesting to note that, after this so-called battle (really another one-sided slaughter!), the exceedingly huge army, which will have gathered to attack Israel for its considerable 'booty', will first die in the battle, then be resurrected to be judged in the Great White Throne Judgment, along with unbelievers across all the ages of human history, then die their second, eternal death as the living dead. ²

Millennial Parallelism (#5)

‘Sandwiching’ Millennial Lords - Adam and Jesus

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¹ Though debatable, this is generally understood to refer to fallen angels who had taken the form of men in order to marry human women in satan’s attempt to corrupt the ‘seed of woman’ God warned him about in Genesis 3:15.

² According to The Bible, being zombie-like forever is one thing Hollywood got right! Since this concept was apparently not used in Isaiah's day, to convert this notion, The Lord used the rather odd phrase, 'their worm does not die'. Moreover, as a human, He reiterated this phrase several times in the Gospel of Mark.